My solution to Reduce Air and Tank spam

FuzzyandBlue · 2012-12-27, 05:30 AM

The first paragraph is a bit of a rant you can skip it if you want.

I spent a couple of weeks trying to convince my brother to play Planetside, He liked the game and we spent a couple of nights playing. On our third night every single outpost, tower and facility that had more than a few guys fighting over it was HE tanks, Dalton/Zepher Libs and a few Lightnings. There was no point in playing infantry. This happened every time we tried to play; Tanks on the hills and Libs in the sky raining high explosive death on any of us who had the audacity to play infantry. As a new player he got frustrated and stopped playing. I am certain his experience is not unique.

Now that my rant is over I want to throw an idea at anyone who cares to read. In my opinion the biggest problem with Vehicles in this game is not how strong they are. It lies more in just how many of them there can be. I have been in more than one fight where there are more player in tanks than players playing infantry. Nothing makes me want to quit more than dropping into a fight where there are 40 Mags sitting on a hill sniping infantry. So the question lies in how do we reduce the number of vehicles without screwing over those who want to be dedicated tankers or pilots?

My answer is three parts: 1. Make the number of resources required to pull a vehicle scale with how upgraded it is. If I decide to pull my Vanguard that has all four utility slots full it is going to take all 750 of my resources. Same goes for Libs and ESFs. 2. Reduce the resources gained passively from territories by 50-75%. 3. Link resource gain directly to how you are playing. For example if I am in a tank I gain Mechanized resources. The same thing goes for infantry and air.

Part three is the most critical in my opinion. It should allow good Tankers, Pilots and Gunners to Pull the Vehicles they want as often as they can.

Mavvvy · 2012-12-27, 05:47 AM

Yeah I agree, on a similar note always thought it was ludicrous that a none ams sundy cost the same as a fully upgraded one.

SeraphC · 2012-12-27, 05:52 AM

Comment on point 1:

Do you think when there is a 'zerg' of hostile tanks, most of them are upgraded? Nope, most aren't. So you suggesting to scale resource costs with the amount of upgrades would not only be entirely ineffective at combating tank proliferation. It would also punish what you call dedicated tank players.

Comment on point2:

When my faction is loosing on the planet/continent/whatever I am fighting on I already gain an extremely low amount of resources. The winning sides have no problem, they have all the land and the passive gains that come with it. They can take a 50% hit. I can't. Not if I want to get out of the underdog position and get back in the game.

Comment on point 3:

So you're playing a tank, you've just spent you last mech resources on it. It gets destroyed nearly instantly. You're left with no resources and no way to gain them because you can no longer 'buy' any vehicles. See the problem?

My suggestion:

Anti-Tank: Allow Engineers to build roadblocks like the ones we already have in bases. Make them 15-30 seconds to build, time limited and destructible (but very hard to do so).
It will allow you to cut off tanks from bases or perhaps trap a tank column in a canyon or something like that. All at the cost of some planning and coordination of course.

Anti-Air: You could suggest a million things. To be honnest I still don't see air as that much of a problem. It only is when you ignore it and refuse to deal with it.

Calisai · 2012-12-27, 10:05 AM

Originally Posted by SeraphC

Comment on point 1:

Do you think when there is a 'zerg' of hostile tanks, most of them are upgraded? Nope, most aren't. So you suggesting to scale resource costs with the amount of upgrades would not only be entirely ineffective at combating tank proliferation. It would also punish what you call dedicated tank players.

You really want to cut down on the number of tanks? Include reduced resource cost with the faster respawn timer certs. Make people use certs to reduce the cost of them, then jack the prices up a bit. The dedicated tank players will already spend the certs to allow pulling of their main vehicle of choice, and it will considerably reduce the "pull a tank to move from base to base" guys... IE, the 1/2 drivers with stock guns on top. Effectively reducing the number of tanks while not really effecting the dedicated tankers.

Infantry wouldn't have a problem with 1 or 2 dedicated tank crews rolling around, if it wasn't for the 15 1/2 tanks mixed in spamming shells everywhere.

Granted, it would decrease the amount of bad tank drivers out there for us to kill.

Sturmhardt · 2012-12-27, 06:12 AM

Well he IS right about a higher cost. I have NEVER been unable to pull my vanguard because of resources and I play the vanguard quite a lot. It's always the timer preventing me to pull it. Right now there is no reason NOT to pull a vehicle and a higher vehicle cost would lower the constant vehicle spam we see everywhere. If the cost was increased people would have to either live long enough in their tanks or play a little bit of infantry after dying.

If you simply buff the counters to tanks you are only pissing off the tanks who wouldn't stand a chance in combat anymore, the tank gameplay would suck for them. Buffing counters to vehicles does not get to the root problem of vehicles being always available (low cost) and always being better than going on foot (base design, another topic).

tldr: If you want to reduce the tankspam without fucking up the gameplay or balance you need to increase the cost and give infantry some role by improving the poor basedesign.

Ghoest9 · 2012-12-27, 07:15 AM

I doubt this is the best solution - it seems like a random nerf idea.
That said it will NEVER happen because SOE isnt going to make their paid upgrades into something you try to play with out.

A better solution is to simply raise the resource cost on Libs and nerf the ground attack ability of ESF.

SeraphC · 2012-12-27, 07:20 AM

Originally Posted by Sturmhardt

Well he IS right about a higher cost. I have NEVER been unable to pull my vanguard because of resources and I play the vanguard quite a lot. It's always the timer preventing me to pull it.

In Indar on Ceres your lucky to pull the resources for a Vanguard once every 40minutes on some nights. Yes, you could make it last that long, but where's the fun in that?
I could also park my char on Amerish for half an hour and be set for the night, but again ... fun.

You have to be careful with cost increases, they can seriously hurt the underdog factions. And "goodfights" don't happen so often when factions are camping into their warpgate.

Suitepee · 2012-12-27, 08:23 AM

I like the idea of point 1 with the current resource system. Would be neat to see having upgraded vehicles cost a bit more to spawn.

Points 2 & 3 I disagree with.

Beerbeer · 2012-12-27, 08:35 AM

Tell your brother he's not playing correctly.

Besides, I would bet that most of the people that hate the vehicle spam are long gone and not coming back, so what's the point.

igster · 2012-12-27, 08:41 AM

or (4) ditch the whole resource idea. PS1 had no issue with Tank Spam because the maps gave infantry safe places and the spawns could not be camped by air or vehicles. There were vehicle phases to combat and infantry phases.

Resources are actually a really badly thought out idea from games such as starcraft that were never properly thought through. Vespene and minerals from starcraft are suited to strategy games where you plan to increase resources and you have longer term strategies for resource generation and how to spend them.

FPS games and tactical shooters like planetside are all about teamwork and reacting appropriately the opposing factions movements and attacks. The last thing you want to do if you have just pulled an expensive tank is to fly to another continent to galaxy drop against an opposition surprise attack.

Let squad leaders determine what his/her troops need to get the job done and don't put more timers/resource constraints in their way. This is Planetside... not Starcraftside.

The timer is the limiter on vehicles not the resources. Dont make 2 things stop people pulling the vehicles they want to play. I want to specialise in armoured combat... dont stop me playing the game i want to play and force me into flying or infantry combat if I haven't chosen to specialise in it.

Make bases and outposts so that they cant be zerged by air/tanks. More indoor areas and proper walls and ceilings. Crazy idea but fewer windows and perhaps the odd door. Dont make spawns where troops have to run a gauntlet of tank and liberator/ESF spam. Not Rocket Science really - common sense has gone out of the window in this game because this resource system was the cornerstone of how everything was meant to work.

fod · 2012-12-27, 08:45 AM

it wont stop it imo

point 1. the people that have no problems lasting a while in their tank will get the upgraded one and the people that dont last long in vehicles will spam cheap no-upgrade ones
i dont like point 2 and 3 it just wont work

personally - i think better bases would solve most of it

SixShooter · 2012-12-27, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by fod

personally - i think better bases would solve most of it

^^This^^

It's all about needing better base designs to keep tanks and air from camping spawns.

shd · 2012-12-27, 01:37 PM

While base redesign is the most obvious and probably best solution i like the aforementioned idea because it's far more realistic.

They moved couple of generators and managed to introduce a handful of bugs with it. I just don't see them doing an entire game design overhaul at this point.

SeraphC · 2012-12-27, 01:52 PM

If they have the ambition to make this game last more than a year they have no choice.

RykerStruvian · 2012-12-27, 09:13 AM

Hate to say it but this is not going to change any time soon. The game has been out for a month, this is the design they went for, and to change it now would end up pissing off a lot of people who legitimately are playing the game the way the developers intended. There really is nothing that can be done because in order to change this aspect of the game is to change one of the main focuses SOE spent time on and pushed, which is the 'Bigger Is Better'.